BobaJam (Asian Desserts Cafe) – Soho

As a “specialist tea and dessert house”, BobaJam offers an array of what’s known as “brewed bubble teas” along with a selection of cakes and desserts popular in the South East of Asia, but rarely available here in the UK.

While it claims to also be “the first bubble tea place to open in Central London”, this particular branch in Soho opened late in October 2016 and offers seating for 40.

It’s brightly lit, simply set up, with plenty of space, and offers a fairly large variety of items as part of an elaborately designed and colourfully attractive menu.

HOUSE SURPRISE

Certainly looked attractive enough with three large translucent globular balls served on a bed of white jelly accompanied by charcoal ice cream and an assortment of fruits.

The best thing about this, however, was the ice cream, which had a mild sweet taste tot it. As for the jelly, then all three of us were agreed that it lacked any real flavour. In fact, the white jelly was more flavourful than its counterpart with a light bubblegum-like taste to it. And while the coconut milk lifted the taste to a degree, it certainly wasn’t enough to make an impression, let alone win us over to what was otherwise a concept that came across as confused and muddled.

As for the fruits, then the bananas were green, hard and on the raw side, the strawberries equally hard, and the raspberries, halved grapes and blue berries decent.

A strange brownie this with a crunchy top, crispy in texture, and rice crispies scattered about the plate. To make matters worse, there was even popcorn incorporated into the mixture making this one big brucnhy mess. Add to that an insipidly tasting scoop of charcoal ice cream, and the entire dessert was ill conceived and wrong.

BRICK TOAST

Nanaberry – Slices of strawberry and banana with chocolate ice cream, cream and almond flakes piled high on a tower of thick brioche toast. Served with chocolate sauce. £6.80

A disparate dessert that simply failed to come together with any real coherency.

The brioche bun pieces, stacked as they were one on top of the other, were toasted, crispy and relatively sweet, and covered in this, that and the other.

From the best thing on the board, i.e. the scoop of chocolate ice cream, to the slices of again hard bananas and strawberries, sprinkles of plentiful almond flakes, and cream that we would have preferred light and fluffy. Sparsely drizzled as it already was in chocolate, the whole thing was also accompanied by a cup of thick nutella sauce which, if you are brave enough to pour all over, will culminate in a sickly, sweet, chocolatey overkill.

BobaJam is a dessert cafe with an assortment of food and drink items which, we believe, you'll either enjoy or you won't.

It could even be desserts that are enjoyed under a particular context and clime. Perhaps we would have enjoyed these far more than we did had it not been such a cold and miserable London evening, and more a warm, tropical one in the Far East somewhere.

We wouldn't like to think so though. Some of these desserts appeared to us to be thrown together haphazardly. We certainly didn't get why almost all of the desserts were served with an assortment of fruits, and that too hard, green bananas and strawberries.

In any case, BobaJam is available for order through Uber Eats and Deliveroo, with an additional branch in Stoke Newington High Street in North London.